Southeast Burma travel guide

Golden Rock

Tapering down the western side of the Gulf of Mottama (Martaban) to the Isthmus of Kra, Southeastern Myanmar is a long, narrow finger of land extending from Kayin and Mon State, through Tanintharyi (Tenasserim), almost to the Thai island of Phuket. In historical terms, this is a marginal land, until recently peripheral to the Bamar centre, with distinct cultural, ethnic and historical ties to neighbouring Thailand and to the Malay-Indonesian world further to the south.

Age-old antipathies between its predominantly Karen population and the Burmese have for decades ensured that the region has been blighted by one of Asia’s longest-running civil wars, and that is has been inaccessible to visitors. However, with a peace accord between the government and insurgent armies now firmly in place and the conflict seemingly at an end, the area is bound to open up over the coming decade.

Golden Rock

Foremost among its many unique attractions is the beautiful “Golden Rock” Pagoda of Mount Kyaiktiyo in Mon State, which can be reached in a day from Yangon. Further south, the Mon capital, Mawlamyine(Moulmein), retains a distinct colonial-era charm and serves as the start, or end, point of cruises by old double-decker ferries on the Thanlwin (Salween) River into neighbouring Kayin State, where the striking limestone hills, caves and mountaintop monasteries around the town of Hpa-an entice increasing numbers of travellers.

Still more isolated is the exquisite coast of Tanintharyi (Tenasserim), in the far south, which is slowly opening up to foreign travellers. At present, the entire region is a delightful tropical backwater, perhaps fifty years removed from the relative affluence and openness of neighbouring Thailand. A more pristine, more beautiful part of mainland Southeast Asia would be hard to find.

With judgement and care, the Tanintharyi Coast, and more especially the totally undeveloped Myeik Archipelago of 800 coral-fringed islets offshore, could become a major source of foreign exchange for Myanmar and its people.

Top places to visit in Southeast Burma

Golden Rock, Mon State

Forming one of the most ethereal spectacles in Southeast Asia, the Kyaiktiyo “Golden Rock” Pagoda crowns a ridge of forested hills in the far north of Mon State, 210km (130 miles) east of Yangon around the Gulf of Mottama. During the pilgrimage season between November and March, tens of thousands of devotees climb daily to the shrine, regarded as the third most sacred in the country after the Shwedagon Pagoda and Maha Muni image in Mandalay, for a glimpse of a modest, 7.3-metre (24ft) stupa mounted atop a lavishly gilded boulder. According to the faithful, only the presence inside the reliquary spire of a hair of the Buddha prevents the rock from toppling into the sheer-sided ravine below.

The hour-long climb to the hilltop temple can be arduous in the heat, and the journey to and from the starting point of the walk in an open-topped truck is less than comfortable. But the effort is rewarded with the chance to see the magical boulder bathed in the delicate, rose-coloured light of dawn or the afterglow of sunset, when crowds of ecstatic pilgrims and monks illuminate flickering candles and incense sticks as offerings.

Mawlamyine, Mon State

Thanks to its fleeting mention in the famous poem Mandalay (1890), the former capital of British Burma, Moulmein – or Mawlamyine as it’s since been re-named – will forever be associated in the foreign imagination with Rudyard Kipling, which is ironic considering the writer only spent a few fleeting hours here. Yet the town, or more accurately the beauty of its women, made a lasting impression on the 24-year-old, who was travelling to England for the first time from Calcutta via the US.

Mawlamyine pagoda was one of several encrusting a prominent ridge inland from the city, today home to more than 500,000 people. Strategically sited 28km (18 miles) inland from the mouth of the Thanlwin (Salween) River, Moulmein was ceded to the British by the Kingdom of Ava in the Treaty of Yandabo at the end of the First Anglo-Burmese War in 1826, whereupon it was transformed into a thriving teak and rubber port. Few of the once sizeable Anglo-Burmese community that formerly dominated Moulmein remain, the majority having left for more prosperous corners of the Empire after Independence, but plenty of mildewing Raj-era buildings attest to its 19^th-century prominence. However, it’s the considerably more ancient Buddhist monuments crowning the ridge inland that tend to draw the eye here.

Myeik Archipelago

An atoll of around 800 coral-fringed islands scattered off the coast of Tanintharyi, the Myeik Archipelago is a tropical paradise of the kind that has all but disappeared in Southeast Asia. The ban on independent travel imposed by the government has ensured that the islands remain much as they have for centuries, inhabited by communities of Malay fishermen and semi-nomadic Moken “Sea Gypsies” who, like their contemporaries further south along the Malay Peninsula, spend the dry season on small boats and return to ramshackle villages on land during the monsoons.

The Japanese are engaged in lucrative pearl fishing in the archipelago, while the region’s swifts’ nests – found in cathedral-like limestone caves accessible only at low tide – are harvested for exotic bird’s-nest soup.

Tourism, however, has thus far made negligible impact. While travellers may visit Myeik and Kawthaung – the atoll’s two main embarkation ports – they are not allowed to explore the islands; immigration police patrolling the ferry docks will arrest anyone who tries. For the time being, the only option is to check into the incongruous, government-owned and eye-wateringly expensive Andaman Club on Thahtay Kyun Island – a 205-room five-star with its own 18-hole golf course and Vegas-style casino. Alternatively, a handful of Thai scuba crews working out of Phuket run live-aboard cruises to the world-class dive sites in the area.

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Wednesday, March 4, 2015